According to mainstream US media reports, on Monday (May 9), dozens of former senators and former officials of the Department of Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, as well as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency ( 47 former senior government officials from agencies such as the NSA) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) suddenly sent a letter to Congress: asking the United States to allow immigrants with STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) degrees to no longer be subject to green card quotas !
At present, the general route for Chinese students to stay in the United States after graduation is: OPT→H-1B→EB-2/3
However, for the general occupational green card in the United States, the annual application quota of any other country cannot exceed 7% of the total immigration green card quota in the United States. This has also led to a serious backlog of applications in populous countries such as China and India. The time it takes for a Chinese to get a green card through EB-2/EB-3 can be as long as ten years or even more than ten years!
So if the proposal can go smoothly, it will be good news for the Chinese – because among the highly educated groups in China, the proportion of the population with a STEM professional degree is the largest.
“The strongest and most enduring asymmetric advantage the United States has in the long-running technological competition is its ability to attract and retain the world’s best and brightest… …but the current immigration system in the U.S. would squander that advantage.”
At the same time, former officials also cited other countries as a comparison, explaining why immigrants with STEM degrees will be an important asset for the United States, and the United States should immediately promote STEM professionals to no longer be subject to green card quotas.
